Therapy
by MarbleGlove
Summary: Cassandra kills a serial killer and Hotch goes to therapy.


"It's the damnedest thing: we caught ourselves a serial killer after one of his victims killed him."

The officer had actually stopped by the BAU office rather than calling or emailing, which was unusual enough to get Hotch's attention. "Hmm, why are you bringing this to us?"

"Because no one knew about him, but apparently he'd been picking off women from a refugee community. When people go missing from there, they've mostly just headed out on their own, trying to find the American dream, right?"

"Hmm." Hotch said noncommittally and then shot Spencer a quick look to make sure he kept his mouth shut.

"But this time, we guess he picked the wrong woman. She's a woman psychologist who volunteered there once a week. He drugged her like the others, and took her back to his place and stuck her in this kill room he'd got all set up in his basement with cages and everything, right?"

He paused, clearly expecting some sort of response, but Hotch just waited for him to get to the point.

"We found all the evidence for his other victims up in his study, but we don't know what happened with this one because however it happened, he was disemboweled on the floor of his kill room with his teeth all knocked in like maybe she just punched him to death until he choked on his own blood and teeth. Disemboweling definitely happened postmortem."

"I imagine she was feeling a lot of rage at that point."

"I expect so, yes. But here's the thing, We didn't find out about it until five days later when the neighbors reported wild animals at his place."

"She couldn't get out of the house?"

"Oh no, she could. She went upstairs, took a shower, and left with a taxi. She was never even reported missing. She was back at work the next day, cool and calm as anything."

"Huh."

"Yup."

"Did you ask her about it?" Hotch carefully did not ask if maybe they'd just identified the wrong woman.

"Yup. Although it took us a while to figure out what exactly to ask. First we just wanted to confirm it was her, and she said it was. We asked her why hadn't reported it. She said she wanted him to decay in isolation and for his body to be eaten by scavengers."

He paused again to let that sink in.

"... was he?"

"Yup. She sure got her wish. The M.E. was not happy having to deal with the results five days later."

"Huh."

"Yup. That was pretty much my response too. She did commit a crime. I mean, the killing was pretty clearly self-defense, but she didn't report it and then there was the desecration of a dead body. I mentioned that to her and she mentioned that she could hire a fancy lawyer, and the prosecutor sure doesn't want to deal with that."

Hotch squelched a sympathetic shudder at the thought of being a prosecutor faced with trying to argue a failure in social responsibility of a victim who'd successfully defended herself against a serial killer. No, the prosecutor would not want that case.

"So, why are you bringing this to me?"

"Here's the thing: we didn't know he was a serial killer, but all of his neighbors say he seemed like a nice quiet guy. In contrast, we do know that she did kill that guy and left his body to eaten by coyotes and her neighbors all take a moment to consider the situation and then nod and say that it sure does sound like something she'd do. None of them say she's violent but they all say she doesn't put up with fools and likes to nip problems in the bud."

"What are you expecting from us?"

"I'm not quite sure. Just thought, since I was in the area and all, that I'd let you know about it."

"Thank you. When you're back at your office, please fax me the case file so we can take a look, but it doesn't sound like there's anything that we need to do at this time."

"Sure thing. It was nice meeting you folks."

The officer eventually left and Hotch had to glare his team back into doing their work rather than focusing on a different case that was already resolved.

But the next time the team was taken off duty for a break, he found himself booking a civilian flight out. He showed up at her office and showed the receptionist his badge.

"I'm Agent Hotchner with the FBI. I'd like to speak with Dr. Cassandra Troy."

"Of course, Agent Hotchner. Please fill out the first time patient form."

"I'm not here for a session. I'm here to speak with Dr. Troy regarding a case."

"I know, Agent. But the doctor gave me a list of names and said that if any of them showed up, I was to have them fill out a first time patient form and then give them the next available session. You're on her list. She always leaves some time in her schedule for emergency sessions."

"May I ask who else is on the list?"

A different voice interrupted. "Every member of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, Senior Supervisory Agent Aaron Hotchner. Please fill out the form. I'll be with you in an hour. In that hour, ask yourself: are you here to talk about my experiences or your own?"

She turned away before he could answer, greeting the patient in the waiting room and ushering him into the backroom.

The obvious answer to her question was that he was here to speak about her experience. Obviously.

But she was prepared with a list of all the members of the BAU? It was public record, who the main team were. You could look it up online. Plenty of law enforcement agencies did look it up before they ever asked for assistance.

And he had shown up alone, without the rest of his team or even a single partner. And it was him rather than any of the other members of his team.

Every member of the BAU had their own demons. It was considered rude, among the team, to analyze each other, although they couldn't help from doing it a little bit. This doctor had already taken control of the situation in a way he didn't like at all.

He couldn't even start the interview the way he had planned to because his first question an hour later was, "Why did you give you receptionist a list of my team's names?"

"I killed a serial killer and the local police seemed unnerved by the situation. It seemed likely that they would find a way to cover their ass by reporting it up some hierarchy. Your team was a likely recipient."

"That doesn't explain the first-time-patient paperwork."

"By virtue of your jobs, I expect you all, individually and collectively, require regular therapy sessions. Whether or not you get them."

"I'm not here to have a therapy session. And to answer your first question: I am here to talk about you, not me."

"Then it seems reasonable to put me at ease in a scenario where I am comfortable and willing to talk, isn't it. Is that why you filled out the paperwork as I requested?"

"It is." The pause was so short, he could hope she didn't catch it. She didn't show any sign of having noticed, but then, he expected she wouldn't. He had filled out the paperwork without really thinking about it. It was paperwork like a dozen other forms that he filled out regularly, about his contact information and his mental health and his ability to do his job despite the frequent stressors. He'd filled it out without thought, and completely honestly. "None of my paperwork is false, but I didn't come here for a therapy session."

"You would not be the first patient who had an alternative motive that they needed to use in order to get the help they needed."

"That's not what I'm doing." Hotch stated firmly, but suddenly he wasn't sure. His team was on break. He was supposed to be home, decompressing. He should be spending time with his son. Instead, he hadn't even told his son that he was on break, and instead had flown across state lines to interview a therapist who had managed to return to her life after a traumatic event so he could learn how she did it.

She sat quietly, watching him but without any judgment or even hint of impatience.

"Why didn't you call the police?" Because that was what it all came down to, really. How had this woman who had been captured by a serial killer and managed to survive long enough to kill him and escape, left the scene and just returned to her life? She'd showered and changed clothes and called herself a taxi. She'd gone back to work the day after she'd beaten a man to death without, as far as they could tell, telling anyone about it.

She looked unimpressed with the question.

"My practice is largely focused on dealing with extreme trauma," she said. "Most of my patients are refugees or former POWs. Some LGBT individuals aren't, but still fit right in. Some women who might as well have been. So ask yourself: why didn't I call for help from the local authorities?"

Her voice was more dryly mocking than anything, for all that the words were accusing. He wondered if perhaps the accusation stung even more because she didn't expect any different.

"A few bad apples…" he offered the old defense somewhat half-heartedly.

"Spoil the lot? Yes, I know."

"Not all…," he trailed off again in the face her judging look.

"Are you going to try 'they are only following orders' next?"

"Then, why didn't you tell anyone at all?"

"Because I wanted him to rot. You're asking the wrong questions. What is it that you really want to know?" She raised a hand. "And take a moment before you speak. What do you want to know?"

He took a breath and let it out and did what she said. He took a moment to think about it. Why was he so obsessed with this particular case that had never even been their case? "He'd captured you and you killed him and then you went home like it was nothing. How did you leave it behind you?"

"You've been in direct conflict with serial killers before Foyet," she said, as if there was no question of her knowing his history of trauma already. "How did you move on from them?"

"They were my job. It wasn't personal."

"Had you ever been credibly and personally threatened by a serial killer before?"

"Yes. But, my family had never been threatened like that. I can defend myself. It's a risk I'm willing to take. But Haley and Jack, they were mine to protect."

"You and Haley were divorced at that time, correct?"

"I was still responsible for protecting her."

"Would she have agreed?"

"She was the mother of my child."

"And now she's dead."

"Yes."

"There are some things you don't leave behind you, you just learn how to manage having them with you always."

"But you moved on."

"That man who captured me and who I killed…"

"Michael Durgan," he filled in.

She shook her head, "I left him to rot. I don't care about his name. That man, I can leave him behind me because I have too many other traumas for him to take up space. He was to me, what your weekly non-Foyet serial killers are: nothing personal."

"A serial killer capturing you wasn't personal?" He was dubious.

"Like many psychologists, I got into the field for personal reasons. Do you recognize the name Evan Caspari?"

"Yes." And now he was less dubious. Anyone who studied serial killers in the last decade knew of Evan Caspari, the cannibal who had never even tried to hide. His house had human trophies in the thousands. He'd flaunted it, but also lived so rurally that the stories seemed like tales of the boogeyman. Local superstition rather than real evidence of a killer. No one had ever figured out how he'd managed it.

"Did you know that he had three brothers? Or at least that's what they called each other?"

"How do you know this?" He kept his voice steady and calm, his speaking-to-a-victim voice. Because he was remembering that Cassandra Troy was an immigrant from Serbia and Evan Caspari had been caught and imprisoned in Romania.

"I honestly don't know if there's any record of them. They rode into small villages and left no survivors to report back."

Even his bones felt cold as this. "May I record this?" This type of information was important to document.

"No."

"Evan Caspari escaped from his prison some years ago." Anything she could tell him might help lead to his re-capture.

"I know. He was killed in Paris soon afterwards." She spoke with certainty but Hotch had never heard of anyone recovering a body.

It was generally assumed that Caspari had set himself up again in some rural forest as the reason kids shouldn't wander too deep, and that he'd die of old age before he was found again. A lot of LEOs hoped that he'd gone to a big city instead and been caught because he didn't understand how big cities worked. But it was a hope rather than any sort of confirmation. If she was somehow a surviving victim of Caspari and took comfort in that hope, then he didn't want to tear it away, but, "How do you know?"

She waved away the question. "My point in this is that, when you deal with enough traumatic events, some of them become personal and some of them just aren't. And there's no magical fix to make something no-longer-personal."

He was no longer interested in his own question, he wanted to know more about Caspari.

She looked at him with sharp eyes though and said, "And distracting yourself with someone else's trauma is not actually going to help you deal with your own."

"It's worked just fine so far," he pointed out, while feeling particularly juvenile.

"If it worked, you wouldn't be here now," she pointed out. He had to admit it was true. His job was focused on other people's trauma and the serial killers who were personal for them.

"Fine. Then what do you suggest?"

"As I understand, there's a relatively common tendency among killers of all sorts is to consider themselves wolves and the rest of the population sheep. A simple dichotomy between the predators and the prey." She spoke as if testing the waters.

"it's an over simplified vision of an already artificial and unsustainable ecosystem." Hotch found himself saying, paraphrasing one of Prentiss' rare rants. She and Spencer had argued literature and metaphors one whole plane ride and he had never quite figured out if they were actually arguing or agreeing with each other. "And natural wolf pack hierarchies are always complex and often circular."

Dr. Troy smiled at him like he'd given the right answer to a quiz. "Exactly. No one adult is always responsible for protecting another adult."

"That's not," he started then broke off. He wasn't going to pretend to miss her point, but, "Haley was still my responsibility."

Dr. Troy snorted lightly. "Everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses and sometimes, in the case of single-minded focus, those strengths and weaknesses are the exact same characteristics. Come with me." And she got up and went to the door of another office in her office suite.

He had assumed it would be another office for meeting patients, with a desk and chair and benign art. Instead, he walked into a work-out space. The floor was padded, there were cubbies with equipment along one wall, mirrors on another, and a punching bag hanging from the ceiling to one side.

"What is this?"

She toed off her shoes and left them by the door but didn't say anything to him about his. Instead she took a roll of tape off one of the shelves.

"Sometimes, therapy isn't about getting over something or moving on, it's about learning when and how to put on tape before you return to the fight. May I?"

She'd torn off a strip of the tape and gestured to his hand. He offered it to her, somewhat bemused by the sudden change, and very aware of the old scars and the new bruises on his knuckles as she wrapped them. She did a good, professional job of it, and while he was now sure she had noticed the damage when they'd first shook hands back in her other office, she didn't say anything. Just finished wrapping one of his hands, made sure he had full mobility with it, and then wrapped his other hand.

The room was silent aside from their breathing, and he knew silence was an interrogation method but he honestly wasn't sure which of them was using it on the other.

She put the tape back and grabbed a couple of gloves off the shelf and showed them to him. They were very thin and fingerless and small enough that they were tight on her hands as she pulled them on.

"And sometimes self-care is having expensive gloves that mean I can skip the tapping up stage."

She threw a punch at the bag, not rushing but also not telegraphing, moving with her whole body to hit the bag with resounding force. It was suddenly easy to imagine her taking down a full-sized man with that unexpected power.

Instead of continuing, she moved around the bag to brace it.

"Would you like to get some of the emotion out this way?"

And he found he really, really did.


End file.
